20250930 Transcript

A History of the Jerusalem Temple - Centre Place

A History of the Jerusalem Temple

Transcript:

Introduction to the Jerusalem Temple

(00:00) Our topic this evening I think is going to be an interesting one. We are looking at the history of the Jerusalem temple. Um so sometimes divided into uh just two temples, the first temple and the second temple, but we're thinking especially of the site where that first and second temple and all the iterations of those two temples um have been on and as well a little bit of the history of the site since the second temple's destruction as well.

The Architectural Structure of the Temple

(00:35) So this is a very in its last um iteration when it was destroyed by the Romans in around the year 70. Um this was a very vast and impressive structure and actually um in its form pretty new at the time because it looked in you know remarkably different and and was different in in all of its forms than it had been uh a century earlier than that as it had been vastly uh remodeled and enlarged and improved by essentially rebuilt by uh King Herod the And so um we have a lot of artists conceptions of the temple even though we

(01:23) don't have um any actual contemporary portraits. There are descriptions and uh we also have the we have descriptions of earlier iterations of the temple in different sources as well. Um but in some ways we have are limited to what artists and want to create when create creating pictures and models. So the temple uh the interior part of the temple the holy place is surrounded by uh restricted precincts which is then surrounded by a much larger uh platform.

(01:59) So, it's on top of a natural uh hill mountain that is then leveled off to make a huge um flat area and at the edges of that. This required an even more impressive construction because it requires vaulting in order to create an artificial um top of a hill and platform to fill the entire space out. Um even though we don't have contemporary illustrations, we have a near contemporary picture.

(02:29) So 60 years after its destruction uh it was destroyed in the first Jewish Roman war. 60 years later during the third Roman Jewish war rebels who are led by Simon Barokba uh issued their own coinage as they're trying to create an independent Judeian kingdom. And on that coin is an image of the lost temple.

(02:54) So you can see in the coins that sort of um flat platform. There's four columns, maybe two are more prominent right around the gate and so forth. And if we go back to what it looked like, this is kind of where the artist conception is coming from. Since all the traces of the temple's inner precinct structures are mostly all destroyed, these coins really provide the main visual source image that has inspired uh the various artist renditions and models.

(03:27) So like I say there are models in this case a big model uh in Jerusalem depicting uh the temple kind of at the time of its destruction or at the time um of Jesus. So it's Jesus around the year 30. The temple's destroyed around the year 70. What it would have looked like when uh the temple renovations by Herod are finished.

(03:50) And you can see this is from the uh Mount of Olives looking west. And so this temple's on the very eastern edge of the city and behind it is the uh the city proper with the Antonia fortress in the uh upper right of the picture. This is where the military garrison would control both the temple and uh the city. And then there are at the uh the very left at the um southern end of the um platform above like I say these large under under the platform vaults in order to rise uh this whole platform up to that size.

(04:29) There's a group of um basilica there essentially for meetings where the uh the council would meet and so forth. Um and this is like zooming in on the holy place with its impressive tall facade and then the inner precincts that are successively um uh ex more exclusive. So anybody can be out in the that large outer precinct uh the court of the Gentiles as it's called which means people who are not Jewish are allowed into there whereas only um Judeian people who are keeping kosher can go into the inner um inner sections and then only exclusively ever further.

The Role of the Temple Complex

(05:13) And so although we may think of the temple as this innermost structure um in another sense the whole thing is considered the temple. The whole complex is the temple. So this innermost uh structure is sometimes called the holy place. The entire platform of the temple complex though is colloquially called the temple.

(05:42) And so for example, when we read in the New Testament about Jesus activities taking place in the temple, for example, Jesus overturning uh the tables of the money changers or Jesus being somewhere in the temple uh teaching, it doesn't mean that he is in this central building or any way that there's tables for money changers in there or any such thing.

(06:04) Uh that holy place is restricted just to people who are priests. So neither of those things are taking place in there. uh nor is it really likely any of those certainly not the money changers part taking place within like I say these exclusive inner precincts of the temple that are around that holy place rather it's this outer giant platform the court of gentiles which served as a forum and forum in for the Romans actually means a marketplace and so It isn't a um unusual thing that the temple complex then would have things like money changers, people um

(06:48) selling sacrificial animals or selling other things because um this is a space that's set aside for business to be able to be uh conducted at the center of the uh the city's activities. So this is sort of the overall complex which is sort of all called uh the temple. And so when we're even thinking of the remaining pieces of the temple, for example, that um um rebbitic Jews people in Judaism in the present day, they're not at any of the walls of the inner sanctum there that are that are all torn down, but or rather uh the western wall

(07:26) is the part of the wall of this platform as we'll see. So this again is the a model of the temple platform. You can see this royal portico on the left, the south end of it which is like I say reserved for meeting places, the um the Antonio fortress on the upper right, the gentile courtyards and then inside are the restricted areas.

(07:52) If we zoom in on those um um there are are warning signs that if you enter this carries uh if you're not a Judeian, it carries uh the death penalty. You can see on the eastern side uh the court that's called the women's courtyard just surrounded by the chamber of lepers, the chamber of wood, the chamber of the Nazerites uh and the chamber of oils.

(08:18) It's called the women's courtyard because women are allowed, you know, women Judeans are allowed to go in that area but aren't allowed to go further. The men are allowed to go a little bit further into um this little portico here between uh these two courtyards. But then once you get inside that is the uh the courtyard of the priests where only priests and Levites are allowed.

(08:43) And then uh that is where the altar and the sacrifice takes place. And within then the holy place what we might think of as the temple temple proper that is only priests can go inside and then within that is the most holy place the holy of holies where only the high priest can go and only once a year on the day of atonement.

(09:04) So it's designed to show increasing exclusivity, increasing uh requirements of holiness in order to um approach the the most holy place, the place that is reserved to be uh the house of the Lord on earth. Um and so if we zoom in on the most holy place and do kind of a cross-section um you can see in there uh is a place where uh the various um you know the various holy elements the manora the place for the bread and so forth.

(09:44) This is are there where the um the priests in general can can uh perform their function. But then there is a big curtain or veil and behind that is where the most holy place is where like I say you're only able to enter on the day of atonement. And the idea is that um because no one else is allowed in there, the um high priest has to have a a rope around him so that if he happens to be struck down or die or something while he's in there, nobody else can go in, they can pull him back out, you know, uh so that the space is not ever uh desecrated. It's to be

(10:15) completely exclusive. And so um you know completely unlike uh how we think of most religious structures today which is about you know bringing people in so that all people can enter in. This is kind of the opposite. The people are in the outside and surrounding and they are um kind of divided off into further and further levels as you get more and more holy and more exclusive getting into the center.

(10:46) And so like I say that's completely different from how churches, mosques and synagogues are today. Uh and so for example this is the sanctuary of the Holy Blossom Synagogue here in Toronto, one of the largest and most important uh influential synagogues in the city. And you know it's designed so that um the congregation uh is able to attend and be part and be within a structure which is very different from the idea that in in any event ancient temples ancient pagan temples especially were designed for there's some of the um

(11:28) you know some temples uh in other religions outside of the west um uh Buddhist temples and so forth are for people to go inside. Um, but anyway, not that's not how they were understood uh in the ancient religions of uh the Greo Roman world, the Canaanites and so forth. So, for example, um the Parthonon, very famous Greek temple in Athens on top of the Acropolis.

(11:56) Um it's a vast kind of colonade that's surrounding again an inter inner sanctum. the um the place for the people as they're making the procession is up the stairs and in the in the spaces surrounding the parthonon and and in fact it's the the innermost part is really for the god and so um the parthonon is specifically designed not as a big church for everybody to uh go and worship inside but rather it is a house for Athena to be uh having her presence inside her divine presence.

(12:33) Um, and for most of these kinds of um, temples in the ancient world, the god's divine presence would be um, infused or imbued in a cult statue. So there will have been in the Parthonon a enormous statue of the goddess and that will been true for more or less all um Greek and Roman and Canaanite um Phoenician and so forth uh temples.

(13:04) So I have a inner sanctum like this and inside there will be um a a representation of the god usually taking the form of an anthropomorphic uh statue that is then um cared for by the priests and priestesses. So the you know exception to that you know is the the temple in Jerusalem. So um second temple Judaism was iconoclastic and absolutely forbid the depiction of God.

(13:38) So statues were denounced as idols and they were particularly anathema. So the um uh the mosaic law forbids um making idols making graven images depicting uh God. And then there are all sorts of um sort of partisan theological explanations which are denouncing um the worship of idols as if um as if the other religions is what we're calling pagans here.

(14:14) But as if the people who are polytheists, people who are worshiping Athena, they don't think that the statue of Athena is the god. Um uh but the kind of the partisan um denunciation of that is as if they did think that rather they think there is a god that is transcending the statue. The statue is is bringing a place of particular focus and that is um why Athena is able to have the parthonon be a house for her.

(14:42) You know, in the same way, um the Jerusalem temple is um providing a place to have um God's presence on the planet have a house and be experienced in the most holy place. And so um like I say the difference then between the inside of Herod's temple the end the second the temp second temple at the end of its um existence that iteration is that it doesn't have a cult statue in there.

(15:14) Um and it's also different from the first temple what we call sometimes called Solomon's temple in that uh it did not have the ark of the covenant. We've had a whole um lecture on the ark of the covenant, how it's understood biblically. It falls out of the narrative um well even well before the time that uh the first temple is destroyed and so therefore it is not mentioned or it's not present among the um artifacts like as you're seeing in here the manora and other things that are known to be um implements uh inside the second temple's holy

(15:49) place. So we're mentioning um how uh the platform here you can see how much taller here this is it this now we've rotated all the other pictures I had we were looking uh west now we're looking north at the sort of the side of the temple and you're seeing the platform of the court of the Gentiles and we're seeing that um at the very southern end here the meeting hall of the royal the royal palace uh idea and then at the top is the Antonia a palace.

(16:23) So in in this case, the bottom here is where there's an incredible amount of um vaulting to in order to raise that elevated platform and there's this vast staircase that existed that would bring you up and into it um because again this is an artificial mountain at that point. And then in this little area there, this is the um component is now known as the western wall.

(16:52) It's a section of this temple mount platform which in the present day is uh a place of worship uh in Judaism where there's the tradition of putting prayers on u scrolls and putting it in and otherwise praying as well there. So like I say this is um some people maybe who don't know about this imagine that this is part of the um the inner uh holy place but in fact it's the exterior of of the um the temple platform itself.

(17:23) Part of the reason for that is that um because only the high priest is supposed to go into the um um into the holiest place. uh if you're let's say a practicing orthodox of some kind, you just going around and walking around up on the top potentially causes you to um break that rule if if depending on where it exactly is.

(17:50) I mean if it's um that was like I say that would have been true um in the past centuries. Now it is difficult to go up there and walk around because of the uh uh you know the different ongoing political issues between um it's not political and other issues between u Muslim Palestinians and uh Jewish Israelis and so forth uh that make it very problematic to uh go on the top because of the Muslim places of worship up there.

(18:19) But in any event, um before that consideration, there was the consideration for alter for Orthodox um Jews to not accidentally walk into where the Holy of Holies is supposed to be because it's not entirely known. It's probably right where the Dome of the Rock is, but um it's not entirely confirmed that that's where it would be. So, we've been going through as I've been showing you kind of all of these um artistic renditions and the models that people have buil built.

(18:53) These are all um um expressions of what the temple would look like at the very end of its existence. The temple as it was rebuilt by Herod the Great or began to be rebuilt by Herod the Great, completed in some instances by his successors because it's such a massive project. Um so Herod today retrospectively is an incredibly unpopular um king.

(19:19) So he's not popular with Christians and not popular I think in general with um with Jews either really. He's um a person who at the time may not have been that popular either. He might have been a little popular with some people, but anyway, he was he was somebody who the Romans could work with and so he was a a collaborator and he was able to um he was able to exercise vast amount of resources but in part that was because of um a lot of taxation which would have you know made him less popular.

(19:50) He's popular maybe in retrospect as a builder because almost everything that survives from um from antiquity kind of comes from his uh his time period. Uh the other things that are are all later are are Roman and and Christian and Muslim uh um editions that are later. um Herod in for example in building that expanding that giant platform that is creating um remains that continues uh to this day.

Historical Context and the First Temple Period

(20:28) And as a great builder he also produced a lot of other things around uh his kingdom uh Judea kind of a greater Judea. So, um, this is kind of the map of Kerod's kingdom at its greatest extent with Jerusalem kind of in the middle. Um, I'm going to call out a couple other areas. He, uh, built a new capital on the coast called Caesar. Uh, he rebuilt the city of Samaria, calling it Sebasta.

(20:58) And then he built for himself a palace uh, on the inside of Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea called the Herodium. and another palace and other palaces like Msada that are sort of fortresses that he could retreat to in uh as he was a little bit um probably rightly paranoid that he might have to fight a lot of defensive wars either in the case of a revolt of his own people against him or in the case of uh if he got on the wrong side of the Romans or any other thing that might happen.

(21:29) So he was always trying to be prepared for that. So the context of Herod having this um kind of strong and relatively rich kingdom where he was able to build uh was that the preceding era of the eastern Mediterranean dominated by um the great Henistic kingdoms. So the Tamies in Egypt, the rulers of Egypt, the Macedonian Greek rulers of Egypt and the Seucids uh the rulers uh of kind of the whole swash from Anatolia across to Persia.

(22:06) But then as their power was declining increasingly just the kings of Syria um as their power declined Judea had experienced a short-lived independence under a native dynasty the Hasmin which is sometimes called the Mcabes uh before um they were conquered. The Makabe kingdom was conquered by uh Pompy the Great and incorporated into the Roman system.

(22:37) So when Pompy was going around and settling um the eastern Mediterranean, bringing it all under kind of Rome's dominion, he took the last of the Seucid Kingdom and um just eliminated that that dynasty and annexed the kingdom and made it the Roman province of Syria which at after which is um its great capital is Antioch. One of the major metropolises then of the Roman world.

(23:05) what had been the um the Hellenistic world. And while he's out there doing that, he decided to conquer the the Hasminan kingdom, the Makabe kingdom, too. Um Herod's family played Roman politics really well. So his father was an Idan. So if we go to the very southern part of this kingdom is is the region of Idimea um who converted to Judaism or was part of the people that were um sort of force forcibly converted maybe but in any event had become a noble under the Hasminians and as a um as a noble with um influence in an army. he had um

(23:45) helped Julius Caesar when Julius Caesar was uh fighting a battle against um Cleopatra's brother in Egypt and so on. In other words, he was well positioned and Herod's family kept Herod and his family kept playing politics well until um in the year 34 around year 34 B.CE CE um the Roman Senate that it's in charge of this client kingdom decides to displace the former Makabe dynasty the Hasminans that Herod has kind of married into and instead declares that Herod is going to be the king of this realm and he's going to be their client.

(24:24) So we mentioned that he's a great builder. This is the ruins of his palace fortress complex at Msada. So this is a really remarkable place. I was just there last year and um one of the things that's incredible of it is you're in this desert at the shore of the Dead Sea. Um and there's no water anywhere all around, but at the top here there's sisterns where they're able to collect all kinds of water.

(24:53) And so that's what you always need in the case of a siege uh is to have your defenders have water and have the attackers not. And so um whereas Herod never had to haul up here and um fight off either rebels or or Romans um when the first Jewish Roman war broke out, the last of the rebels very famously um retreated to this position where they were besieged by the Romans between the years 73 and 74.

(25:26) the Romans ended up having to make a huge ramp and uh there's a whole um when I was a little kid there was a a really I don't know dramatic miniseries about the whole thing and um it's still sort of very celebrated. it's become part of um a nationalist myth story. But in any event, it's a story that's told in Josephus, but the um and there's some some problems with it in terms of him being our only source for it, but it's the the site is a really still an amazing place.

(26:00) Herod also built um even bigger and more impressive palace fortress complex called the Herodium. Um, and this includes what would have been his uh his mausoleum and also um a palace retreat. And again, it's off kind of in the desert and has a similar um uh situation of being able to have water for itself and so forth. Like I said, he built a new uh capital for his kingdom and he built it on the uh coast.

(26:31) So one of the problems so north in Canaan the Phoenician coast it's now Lebanon and up there um has a number of you know pretty good ports like the city of Ty that um was a major uh mercantile republic for hundreds and hundreds of years. Um there are less good ports all along the southern Canaanite coast. Um, and so in order to connect to the uh Roman maritime economy that ex exists in the uh Mediterranean Sea, um um Herod built an artificial harbor for this new capital and that involved using the very latest uh Roman engineering techniques that he was able

(27:13) to get for doing under underwater cement and so forth and built um you know quite an impressive city and because um he knows how to play the game, you know, he he switches. So he was initially uh team Julius Caesar at the right moment or his dad was then he's uh when Anthony is Mark Anthony is is in control of the east during the um second triumvirate and uh Octavian uh Caesar's nephew and heir is sort of ruling in Rome and has divided the east where Anthony and Cleopatra are ruling.

(27:52) um Herod is able to play uh into their team and as right until they're about to lose, which they famously do. And when that happens, he switch sides at right the right time and goes on the side of Octavian or Augustus. And so here he names his capital in the same way that Alexandria has been named in honor of Alexander.

(28:16) Caesar is named in honor of his uh uh Herod's patron um Caesar Augustus. He also um rebuilt the city of Samaria, the capital of the Samaritans and he called the new town now renamed it Sebasta. So the Hasminan king John Hercanis one of the Makabe kings had destroyed the city of Samaria back in the year 108 B.CE.

(28:48) So Herod now as a great builder rebuilds it, changes its name to Sebasta. And so that's the Greek name for Augustus. So he has a Caesar and he also has a Sebasta to show his loyalty again to Caesar Augustus. And part of what he does now in the same way that the um the Judeans had had their own temple in Jerusalem as the center of their worship of the God of Israel of Yahweh.

(29:15) So too, the Samaritans uh have their central temple uh and and now this is replaced for uh a pagan temple that is dedicated to the worship of Augustus. Obviously very much not something that the Samaritans are happy with uh during any of this time. Herod's um refounding of it and building um a pagan temple did serve maybe as a precedent for the later Roman emperor Hadrien who decides eventually um after the city of Jerusalem is destroyed to found a pagan city there Alia Capalina.

(29:53) Um and that again like always whenever you're giving something a new name you've name it after the leader. In this case Hrien's naming it after himself. So Hadrien's um Gen's name is Alia just like you know how we have gas Julius Caesar so be like the Julius and so he's the one of the alia um and he builds that on the site of Jerusalem and very likely where Herod's temple was at the center place of that he uh builds a pagan Roman um temple dedicated to Jupiter on the site.

(30:27) So there's where those sites that we've gone through in Herod's kingdom are. So as I say, Herod's temple is called the second temple. Um that's um not to say that the temple that Herod um you know replaced was the first temple. The temple he replaced is also called the second temple. In other words, there had been a temple there at the beginning of Herod's reign that he um more or less entirely rebuilt.

(31:00) Um and and and so that temple, like I say, was not the first temple. That was also the second temple. So when we're talking about this, it's because we're talking about these two big periods. But within the first temple period and then the its destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians and the second temple period and its destruction by the Romans actually both of those temples were likely rebuilt, enlarged, improved, uh refurbished and so on multiple times.

(31:27) And so there wouldn't have only just been two temples in the sense of um what we think of maybe like now is when we're considering like a building because the it would be almost like in the sense of um you know old St. Peter's was completely uh replaced by uh Pope Julius to build the new St. Peters in Rome.

(31:49) They're still both St. Peters but they're very different uh buildings. And um the original second temple would have been much much more modest, the one that Herod replaced or maybe there was a Hasmonian Hasmin Makabe improvements that had happened since the very first one. But when the Judeian exiles uh in Babylon were first given permission by the Persian emperors to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

(32:18) So the beginning of the second temple period their resources were very limited. Um so the original second temple that would have been completed then at the beginning of the first Persian period would have been a lot more modest than what we always look at when we're looking at the models and artistic renditions of Herod's temple.

(32:37) Although almost certainly some enlargements and improvements took place under the Hasmin under the Mcabes. Um, and so this is an artist's rendition of how the second temple might have looked after it was constructed around the year beginning around the year 516 by Zerubbabel who is the uh Jewish um leader who is a Persian official in charge of Jerusalem.

(33:05) Um just an example of um rebuilding. I mean all buildings uh his all historic buildings, all modern buildings require extensive maintenance in order for them to exist. You know, I'm a person who loves um old buildings, ancient buildings, medieval buildings, modern buildings that look really cool.

(33:27) Um, and sometimes we go, we watch like videos, it'll be like lost Toronto and we see all of these incredible uh structures that have, you know, eventually been torn down and replaced with other buildings. Um, and in some cases, the reason why some some of these have been lost is that just the maintenance of kind of keeping them in place would have been very very difficult and very expensive.

(33:48) And so it's a lot easier to tear down a building when it no longer has use. it's no longer in um uh it's no longer in fashion. It doesn't have the purpose that it once had. So with a religious building um the purpose continues to be there but uh it may well be that you like reconstruct it as we mentioned with uh St. Peter's in Rome.

(34:11) Another example is the Cabba. So this um holy shrine at the center of Mecca. Um and so this is a building that you know according to tradition dates back to Abraham but none of it um in terms of this present construction um has anything like that kind of antiquity because it is been entirely bu rebuilt many many times most recently in 1996 um but it also on multiple occasions in the centuries after the death of the prophet Muhammad the whole thing was totally destroyed and then built uh again so multiple times And certainly that tradition of um being

Persian Influence and the Second Temple

(34:52) willing to destroy anything historic is ongoing in Mecca where uh all all of the sort of art Ottoman era um early modern uh historic structures are you know slowly or quickly being demolished in order to build um giant mega structures like the the clock tower uh hotel there. So um the second temple period let's look at kind of the history of the second temple. So it begins with Persia.

(35:24) Um the Babylonians had uh conquered and destroyed uh the independent kingdom of Judah and that first temple and taken the king and many of the e leading nobles and other priests and so on to Babylon where they were in exile. um that continued until the Babylonian Empire itself was conquered by the Persians in 539.

(35:49) And so now the Persian Empire is a much bigger and more extensive world empire than has existed in the West um previously. And so unlike uh the Assyrians and the Babylonians who um and even the Hittites who had their own way of doing this who when they conquered people they um uh they declared the people's gods defeated and uh took them into captivity and other things like that and they imposed their will and rule and power as as widely as possible.

(36:29) um the Persians um are ruling such a much more vast territory that they um came up with a a policy of having local leaders effectively be uh kings under a king of kings. They're essentially the sat traps over large provinces and then often within those catropies people are able to continue to maintain you know the worship of their own gods their own religion relatively un unhindered.

(37:00) um the empire itself uh the emperors are patrons of the new world religion of the Persians, the Zoroastrians and that is exerting influence but in general there is a a different level of religious tolerance than will have existed under the Babylonians or the Assyrians. Um so like I say the Babylonians had t destroyed Jerusalem and taken the elite of the kingdom of Judah the former kingdom into exile and that created um Judaism as a diaspora religion.

(37:32) This is really where it starts to take off where a real identity is formed. Before that, the kingdom of Judah was very similar to um what its neighbors would have been like in a lot of their worship. There had been um some very recent movements towards centralization and also towards uh eliminating a pantheon and moving towards uh worship only of the God of Israel and monolatry.

(38:02) But it's really, you know, which is something that some of the neighbors had been doing too um in with their own their own uh god of their own kingdom. But now in exile um as people are asking well we no longer have this centralized worship uh where all of our focus was on worshiping God in this one sacred place and nowhere else.

(38:26) That place is now gone. How do we understand this faith as we are exiles uh weeping on the on the banks of the rivers of Babylon? Uh and so that's um happening on the one hand in the diaspora in Babylonian and there is also a diaspora community that uh fled into Egypt. And so after Persia then conquers Babylon, the emperor Cyrus the Great allows some of those exiles to return to Jerusalem.

(38:57) But again, this not does not become an independent kingdom or any such thing. Rather, it is the seat of a Persian province which has reduced um reduced economic capacity than what it had before. So the province of Judah or Yehood as it's kind of called in the Persian context. So the biblical texts in the books of Ezra in multiple places and variants, the book of chronicles, the book of Ezras, which is the um one of the apocryphal books of Ezra, record multiple decrees from Cyrus, the king of kings of Persia, and his

(39:36) successors, uh allowing the exiles to return and even commanding them to rebuild the temple. So the historicity of these edicts as we actually have them in the Bible is pretty disputed. Have they been you know are they writing about something that is an actual policy? But this is not the words that they came in.

(39:55) But um one of the examples of these is found at the very beginning of the book of Ezra where we read in the first year of King Cyrus of Persia or the first year after he took over Babylon. He made a proclamation throughout all of his kingdom and also in writing saying, "Thus says King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he's charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

(40:26) Let any of those among you who are of his people, may their God be with them, go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel." He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let all survivors in whatever place they reside be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods, with livestock besides free will offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.

(40:54) So um regardless of you know whether this is an actual decree it's definitely u the focus within the um the returning community in the in led by Ezra that this is their understanding of what u what they're doing that it's authorized within uh the Persian system that they have their own um worship of their own god that is permitted in their temple in Jerusalem.

(41:20) the f one of the first leaders that goes back uh is called Zerubbabel and so he is identified as a prince of the house of David. So um the Davidic line have been the kings of uh Jerusalem up until the end and then the last kings and their uh descendants are taken off into exile.

(41:47) So, one of these uh Zerubbabel is appointed by uh the Persian emperor or the Persian officials in order to lead their province of Judah of Yehood, a district that's centered on Jerusalem. The name apparently derives from the Babylonian word Zeru Babel meaning seed of Babylon. And so the implication is if you have now if you started taking on Babylonian names um the Judeian community in exile has probably undergone some significant Babylonianization.

(42:18) Um, we know that over time the um the people are no longer u going to be speaking Hebrew but are um in the in the land they're um switching to the lingua franca of the Persian empire in the smitic zone which is Aramaic and uh they are moving from the old paleo Hebrew alphabet to the uh the langu the uh alpha the writing system was alphabet the writing system that is um um uh being used by the by the Babylonian Empire and they also for example adopt the the Babylonian calendar.

(43:01) So there's been um some change as they come back and are now functioning within the Persian system. Um the map here, all of these different colored areas are different Persian provinces or subprovinces within the Satrope uh that is the the land as the as the Persians think of it, the land beyond the Euphrates.

(43:27) So the the trans Eupratine um uh Satriy and so these are subprovinces within it. You can see Judah is just a little area around uh Jerusalem and above that is Samaria, the province centered on uh the city of Samaria. So the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed along with the temple and the lands had really been devastated and so they don't have a lot of resources as they're trying to rebuild walls, rebuild a city, rebuild a temple.

Conflict with Samaritans and Internal Rivalries

(43:57) Um like we say uh nevertheless they have decrees and the and Zerubbabel and the exiles um are able to rebuild the city and walls as they are operated under Persian rule. Meanwhile north of them in Samaria um the Samaritan the place that had been the heartland of the kingdom of Israel. So Israel the kingdom when it had been independent would have included not only Samaria but also Galilee and Gilead.

(44:26) Um, but these are all broken away into different provinces. And now the one that continues to have an Israelite identity is Samaria, the heartland of the northern kingdom. Um, but that kingdom had been destroyed all the way back in 720 B.CE by the Assyrians. So, it has had a little more time to um to rebuild.

(44:50) And so, the Samaritans saw the returning Judean exiles as kin. uh they said, "Hey, you worship the same God of Israel that we do." And so in according to the book of Ezra, they offer their assistance to the Judeans uh in helping to rebuild the Judeian, I'm sorry, the Jerusalem temple. We read in Ezra chapter 4 that they the Samaritans approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the families of the returning exiles and said to them, "Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do.

(45:26) " However, according to the book of Ezra, Zerubbabel and the returning exiles reject any assistance and they also disavow kinship with the northerners whom they portray. Um, you know, it even says when it says they, it calls them the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin even though these adversaries is are, you know, offering to help.

(45:50) So the part is an explanation which um the author of the book of Ezra puts into the mouths of Samaritans. It's not it's not something the Samaritans would say because it's not what they believe of themselves. Um they say that the Jude the Judeian claim anyway is that the Samaritans are not descendants from ancient Israel but rather they are the descendants of transportees that have been brought to the land by King Esserhadan of Assyria.

(46:16) So when the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom, they took away some of the elite just like um the Babylonians had done to the uh Judeans and they transplanted them to northern Iraq to Mesopotamia, the Assyrian area on the other side of the Assyrian frontier. And when they did that, they took people from all over their empire and planted them in uh Samaria as well in order to in order to create create everybody's dependence on the Assyrians.

(46:51) If you have essentially lost your entire um kin network, you're much more likely and much more able to be um uh dependent on the imperial system. You could be a mercenary for them or something because you don't have an immediate kin group that you can go back to. This is the same thing that happens um with some of the Judeian exiles that go to Egypt.

(47:12) They settle um all the way on the south side of Egypt on the other end of the frontier of Egypt's other borders in the south in Elephantine because um because then they the Egyptian Pharaohs are not worried about them, you know, rebelling and making common cause with anybody in Judea because they're so far away. They're much more going to be much more dependent on and loyal to the Pharaohs.

(47:35) Um nevertheless this um you know may this may be true for a percentage of the elites. The vast amount of um people who are you know the poor people, the peasants, the people who are the bulk of the population are not being um moved and they will have been uh the same people. And so what will have happened in the interim is that the transportes have been assimilated by the bulk of the uh Israelite population or now we now are thinking of Samaritans in there.

(48:10) There nevertheless this um this argument and um that the returnees have uh not wanting to um mix with anybody who has stayed in the land um gives birth to kind of an ethnic rivalry. And so now for the rest of the period, you know, and and beyond, um, they're not necessarily on the same side as the Samaritans. It may be overblown the the the amount of hatred between the the Judeans and the Samaritans, but there definitely is clearly a lot of instances we have of of bad blood between the two groups.

(48:45) Um so shortly after the exiles return they come back with a um Davididic prince Zerubbabel uh but he falls out of the narrative and then that line disappears from history and it's just one of the the weirder weirder things in a way um in the biblical narrative because uh when you're reading the the Deuteronomic histories of the Bible the books of um you know Samuel and Kings and so forth.

(49:16) The Davidic covenant trying to get to the point where, you know, King David becomes this model king and all the way down to uh uh successors that are extolled like Josiah. Um and now suddenly the the descendants um you know sort of disappear. We can see probably why it happened or we can speculate why it happened. It may be that having um having somebody from this royal house is too dangerous for the Persians to have as a um is even their own governor because it may well be that they always want to become king instead of governor. And so they may be

(49:53) eager to rebel. And so maybe Zerubbabel has been too uh or his descendants or somebody has been too uh not not obedient enough to imperial orders. But in any event, they disappear uh from the narrative and within a generation or so we have a new leader Nehemiah um who is continuing to lead the exiles and uh directing them in the ongoing rebuilding of Jerusalem.

(50:21) um we do end up having when I say the um the Davidic line disappears. Um nevertheless, while there are no more um physical um you know representatives uh of Davidic kings, it starts to become a spiritualized thing. And so instead the one of the titles for king is Messiah uh the anointed one.

(50:47) Uh that could also be for the for the high priest or for priests, but one of them is is a title for the king. And so when there are no more um representatives of the physical line, this becomes spiritualized. And so in the second temple people period um Judeans start looking forward to a um an apocalyptic um restoration where um God will raise a new um leader from the seed of David.

(51:17) Uh there will be a new Davidic prince, a new messia messiah who will um who will have a future that is you know is is much grander than anything that that actually hap happened in the past or the real past and it may well have a cosmic um consequence. And this is certainly um how uh the religion that eventually becomes Christianity, the Jesus movement uh comes to see Jesus after his execution.

(51:46) And so then a couple I mean a generation later when the authors of the gospels of Matthew and Luke are writing their gospels, they construct uh fictive not real genealogies that are based on um on genealogies that they read from the Hebrew Bible in order to um take uh take a line that goes from Adam to uh to David and then eventually down to Jesus in order to draw Jesus and connect him into that um important line.

(52:19) And they each of them construct completely different genealogies. Christians always want to um try to work it out to try to make it so well one is remarry or whatever it is in order to try to make these contradictory um genealogies work as if they were literally. They're simply constructed. They're not any they're not based on any records or anything other than um other than the Bible precedent.

The Hellenistic Period and Rise of Roman Influence

(52:42) Okay. So, as we're talking about the history of the second temple, let's try to ground this in our one of our timelines. And so, we can see here from, you know, we're starting on the uh from left to right, 600 before the common era going to the end of the BC era and into the common era.

(53:03) So, um starting at the very left is the destruction of the first temple. And the Babylonian captivity is not really that long in the whole course of this. But it's incredibly important for um creating the identity of this religion as a diaspora religion because ever after um the majority of the people and the majority of the adherence are not actually in the land.

(53:27) They're in diaspora either in Egypt and Babylon or you know when taken in bulk both of those and then beyond. So, um, exiles return after that proclamation of Cyrus, whether that's the literal one or whatever the allowance of the Persian government to do that. Um, and they build an early iteration of the second temple and then we can kind of see this whole long period uh when the Judans largely are getting along with the Persians.

(53:58) Um, and that's looked back upon anyway as being, you know, like the Judeans kind of see themselves as being more allied with and more um on the same page with the Persian officials and Persian emperors than than they're going to be in the next period, which is the Hellenistic period. So that changes, everything changes when Alexander there in 331 overthrows Persia.

(54:22) Thereafter um the area is split between the Tamies in Egypt and the Seucids in Syria with the Talmies initially exercising control over Judea and living generally in peace or getting along okay with the people in Judea although um there is this constant tension as there is more um more Hellenization.

(54:50) So there's a huge diaspora community that emerges in the TMA capital of Alexandria, huge Judeian uh community and then there is also uh Egyptian control over the land. uh and so the question is not you know it's not like opposing Helenism but rather how much how much Helenism should we accept and it's a argument kind of between sort of extreme helanizers who think hey all of these Greek ideas and speaking Greek and everything like that is completely um that's completely conssonate with our religion as as Jews we can do this just

(55:27) fine and then there are people who say Well, we'll take some of this, but we have to draw the line in a couple places for our own distinction that are are much more uh stark. And so, it's not really it's sometimes portrayed as pro-helanists and anti-helanists. It's actually a camp of people who are okay with some helenizing because they can't resist it and people who'd want to go further uh than that.

(55:54) Um things change a little with the um as the Seucid Empire contracts and the rulers who are now controlling mostly Syria decide that they want to um they take one they take control of Judea from the Tamies and they trying to um harmonize their kingdom more so that they are less likely to lose swashes to of it than they had.

(56:18) And so they um part of the idea seems to be from the um solucid leaders that they want to have everybody more on the same page to helanize more and faster. And so um Antiochus III takes Jerusalem. His uh one of his successors Antiochus IV uh takes it again. and when he does um he u outlaws uh a lot of Judean traditions uh independent practice and most importantly he sets up an altar to Zeus or a symbol to Zeus in the second temple which is seen as a terrible desecration and that causes a revolt to happen and so the revolt seizes control of uh the

(57:03) temple and is able to rededicate it uh during um this story that becomes the Hanukkah story um that eventually leads to kind of Hasmanean Makabe autonomy and ultimately independence when the Seucid Empire's power contracts. So you can kind of see that little window. The Hasminians are are running around and existing under the Seucids autonomously and then later under the Romans as clients but for a little period of time in there they are kind of fully independent Henistic kings in their own right. Uh that ends of

(57:40) course with Pompy and the uh the Roman conquest in terms of the temple. Pompy ends up entering the holy of holies of the temple which you know obviously not supposed to do. Um and shortly, you know, in under Roman rule, as we said, the um the Senate decides to replace uh the Hasminians as the kings with the Herodians and ultimately to just incorporate Judea as a um uh directly ruled Roman province.

(58:10) Um and ultimately that leads to uh a revolt in which Jerusalem and the second temple are destroyed. So that's the vast kind of sweep of the history of the second temple. So uh in terms of like this change that happens between the Persian period and the Henistic period um Josephus looks back and tells an apocryphal story that the initial contact with Alexander was very positive that Alexander came to the Jerusalem temple.

(58:40) He offered a sacrifice there which is not out of keeping with the kinds of things that Alexander would do. He certainly went and did that at Egyptian sites to um show that he was honoring local traditions. Um but in the what I would say is especially apocryphal part of the story, Alexander is shown a scroll of the book of Daniel. And in the scroll in the book of Daniel as we have it in the Bible, um the prophet Daniel predicts that uh Alexander will rise and he will overthrow the Persian Empire.

(59:13) Um and it actually also predicts that after Alexander's fall he will be succeeded by these successor generals the Tomies the Seucids and the other uh different successors and that's very clear that that Daniel is explicitly predicting the reign of Alexander and his successors but it does so because it was written almost two centuries after Alexander lived and so in other words it's very accurate in its predictions but this is a reason why we know that Alexander never read it because it's in other It's it's accurate because it's written after

(59:44) after the fact. Um after Alexander of Macedon conquered Persia, as I say, Judea, Samaria became province in the Hellenistic successor kingdoms and initially they fall under the authorities of the Tamies of Egypt. So Tommy Sotur had been one of um Alexander's generals and he very wisely um uh when everything's falling apart after Alexander's death he very wisely runs to Egypt in order to take control of that as the richest and most easy to u rule part of Alexander's empire and he also very wisely um grabs Alexander's

(1:00:24) body which he brings in order to have control over that uh that legacy brings it to this new capital of Alexandria which becomes the center of the Henistic world. But in addition to being the center of the Hellenistic world, it becomes the the largest um diaspora population for uh Judeans. And so initially um Judea itself is under the authority of the Tamies, but like I say after 198 B.

(1:00:56) CE the Seucid Kingdom of Syria conquers it. um elites in uh both Samaria and um Judea were heavily influenced by Hellenism and some of the other provinces like Galilee maybe even more so. Originally the Seucids had been the most powerful successor with a kingdom that stretched all across Anatolia that is modern Turkey and all across Iran and Afghanistan.

(1:01:26) Um but by the time they are taking control of Judea they had lost almost all of that. So they had lost Anatolia to Rome and there is a revived um related to Persians but anyway revived Iranian um empire of the Parththeians that has taken control now of um Persia and Mesopotamia. And that leaves really only kind of a rump state in Syria and ultimately the Romans are going to enex that.

(1:01:57) So that decline of solucid power that provides really the context for that revolt we talk about of the Mcabes of the Hasminian shortlived Makabian Hasmonian kingdom of Judea. So this lucid king Antiochus IV decides to suppress the Jewish religion. Marches on Jerusalem. He sets up either an altar or an idol of Zeus.

(1:02:22) In the book of Daniel, this is called an abomination, the abomination of desolation. So, it desecrates the temple. This action then sparks that revolt by Judas the Makab uh the hammer, Judas Makabeas, the Hasmonian family, which successfully retakes Jerusalem and rededicates the temple. And this like I say uh includes the miracle that uh provides the basis for the story of Hanukkah and the festival of Hanukkah.

(1:02:50) So the reason why like I say um the predictions in the book of Daniel uh of Antiochus's actions or what Alexander does and everything leading all the way up to putting this um uh abomination in the temple. Those are all those are all tracking perfectly all the way up to 167. But then this is immediately followed in the book of Daniel by a false prediction of the way Antiochus is going to die.

(1:03:18) So it's it predicts that he'll die but it'll he'll die in a particular area. He dies somewhere completely different. And so the book suddenly after from 164 on all of its predictions of the future which had been so accurate now start to go haywire. And indeed the author has predicted that the end of the world is going to happen almost immediately within within the lifetime.

(1:03:41) Uh and so like all apocalypses um that are written by a pseudopigraphal author put into you know like the Daniel's living centuries earlier. And so it's putting into Daniel's lips all of this future prediction that's coming down to when the author himself is living. let's say around the year 167 or so, 166, 167, 165, somewhere in that range.

(1:04:06) So, the predictions up until that moment are fantastic. Um, then this apocalyptic author who believes in a literal end of the world that's going to happen in his lifetime. Um, all of the all the things that aren't past predictions, things that are real predictions, those all end up proving false. And this is the problem with uh apocalyptic literalism.

(1:04:24) So, the book of Daniel is continuously reinterpreted. Um but this is its context. Um and which we shouldn't this is the problem with uh any you know whether the author is a believing apocalyptic literalist or whether an interpreter is um this is not u it's not a way to truth. So anyway, the reconsecration then of the temple, like I say, is accompanied by a miracle of overcoming oil scarcity.

(1:04:53) And that then becomes uh the origin of the Hanukkah festival. The one of the only one of the um uh uh the great Jewish festivals or the big or the Jewish festivals. It's not I guess it's not the one of the top ones, but anyway, the one of the only one of the contemporary rabbitic Jewish Jewish festivals that um isn't drawn from the Hebrew Bible, but is drawn from uh a story in Mcabes, which didn't make it into the Hebrew Bible, but is in the uh Orthodox uh Christian and Catholic Christian Bibles, not the Protestant.

(1:05:26) So, as I say, the Hasminans, the Mcabes, ultimately achieve autonomy from the Seucids initially ruling as ethnarks and high priests of Jerusalem. This doesn't please everybody because um they're not from the family. They are priests, but they're not from the family of the high priests. And so, different high priests don't people from that actual lineage don't think that they should be the high priest.

(1:05:53) And they also are not Davidic kings. them out from that line. So later when they come become kings, not everybody's satisfied or are pleased with that. Um meanwhile also uh the Samaritans did not help in the revolt against the Seucids. And so once again the Judeans see them as enemies. And so as lucid power continues to decline, the um the Mcabes from their base in Judea are able to conquer also Samaria to the north and Ida to the south.

(1:06:30) Um and they start to um begin expanding also their religion. Um and Samaritans are not interested but the Idans start to join. And this is why we see later Idmian noblemen uh like Herod and his father um are practicing in the Jewish religion, the second temple Jewish religion. So having conquered Samaria, John Hercanis, the uh Hasminan king destroys their temple on Mount Garism.

(1:06:57) Um because their understanding of the worship of the God of Israel is that it can only be at the one temple in Jerusalem and the Samaritan interpretation that it's at their temple in Samaria is um is seen as a schismatic rival position that is heresy. Herana's son Aristibulus the first is the one who was finally able to assert Hasminan independence.

(1:07:23) And among the titles he takes is Basileus or king. the Greek word for king. So he now becomes a um henistic king. And so there's an irony because um in some ways the Mcabes are um they're portrayed as these incredible defenders of the Judean um culture from helanizing influence. And yet um they also themselves helenize.

(1:07:50) The only way the only model for kingship in the Henistic world is helenistic kingship. And so they start to take on um Greek names and so on and and and Greek practices. So so in that sense uh helanizing is a um is a civil war that is being um uh argued among the elites. So Hasminans successfully begin also Judaizing Idmans and Galileans.

(1:08:20) And so this is why when we um get to Jesus time, there's a large um uh population. It's a mixed population. Some of them are uh we might call let's say Canaanite pagan peasants. Some of some of them are uh Greekeaking pagans and some of them are um Judean um u Aramaic speakaking peasants. So in other words, a mixed group up in Galilee.

(1:08:51) The Samaritans uh resist um as they are upset about well the destruction of their temple. They've been upset about about a lot of these rivalries and they also have their own sort of very centralized identity that they maintain and continue to exist. We've had a whole lecture on on the Samaritans and why there's so few of them today, but how they had a lot there were a lot more in both in antiquity and the Middle Ages or the early late antiquity.

(1:09:17) So like I say um solucid weakness was the context that allowed the Hasmin and the Makabe uh kingdom to be independent. It also though that same weakness of the Hellenistic powers that attracted this rising Mediterranean power into the region, the new um ancient superpower of Rome.

(1:09:41) And so one of those leaders of the Roman Republic, one of the uh most successful generals enexed the Seucid Kingdom to Rome, just ended that it its existence. And as he's marching his armies around uh establishing things in the east, um deciding on where the Roman borders and frontiers are going to be, he lays siege to Jerusalem, the Hasminian capital.

(1:10:06) He conquers the city and when he does, like I say, he tours the temple and enters the Holy of Holies, which desecrates it. But possibly he doesn't understand that you're not supposed to do that. In any event, he he ends up doing it. So, um, Rome then is in charge. And as we saw, Rome initially allows the Hasminian kings to continue to rule in Judea as clients, which more or less means the Senate, you know, is in charge of foreign policy.

(1:10:33) uh the frontiers, you're part of the Roman system, but you can govern internally. Um and over time though, the Senate recognizes Herod, the son of this loyal Idimean noble, as king, and that allowed him when he has control of this whole territory to have this great rebuilding program. But nevertheless, when you're a client, you don't have total control.

(1:10:54) And so if the Senate, you know, is the person that named, I'm sorry, the Senate is the power that named um Herod the king, it can also decide what to do once he's dead. And so when he dies, Rome divides his realm into tetrarchies. That is to say, pe four places that are ruled by four different people.

(1:11:15) That is, so in other words, he's cutting it up into bits. And so now, um Herod's sons are not going to be kings. they're going to be a tetrarch of a different of an area. And so you can see kind of here the orange area, you know, is the tetrarchy of Herod Antipus. Uh there is the pink area that's the tetrarchy of, you know, Herod Phillip.

(1:11:38) And uh and then the other tetrarchy is Herod's main son, the one that contains Samaria, Judea, and Ida. But he proves so unsatisfactory to the Romans that they they eliminate him altogether. And just by Jesus's time, this is being ruled directly uh by the Romans as a prefecture. And that's why there's a Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, at the time of Jesus's trial.

(1:11:59) So it is essentially a sub region that is all under, as you can kind of see, Syria is the great big northern province that is kind of the the um the important leadership for the Romans in the area. So the metropolitan capital of of Antioch and this is where the large number of legions are are are settled. So we mentioned that Herod the Great had rebuilt the city of Samaria as a pagan city named Sebasta, Greek for Augustus, in order to honor his patron.

(1:12:34) And they also had a temple there to worship the imperial cult. Well, Caligula demands that he should have a statue of himself dressed up as Jupiter and that that should be installed in the Jerusalem temple in order to show the um the Judeans are are also loyal to the empire and are um revering the imperial emperor uh like all good all good Romans are and their clients are supposed to do.

(1:13:04) um that order if it had been fulfilled would likely have sparked um a revolt just like the the time um Antiochus IVth Epiphanies did it in the in the Henistic period. And the reason why we can say so is that there are a bunch of revolts um later with less um I mean with somewhat less uh than than that kind of um um I'm going to say life or death for the religion.

(1:13:33) the the temple is the center of the religious identity at this point in second temple Judaism and so with less um cause than that there are uh three additional wars that actually are held later. So the crisis is averted because Caligula is not popular with anybody and so he gets assassinated um and possibly as part of a conspiracy with his own guards since his guards end up um um more or less having a coup after that where they uh bring out his uncle as as uh Claudius as their new uh leader.

(1:14:11) Uh even so, even though that particular um uh incident was averted, Judeans continue to be very discontented with Roman rule and that persists until a full-scale rebellion does break out in ' 66. The rebels are initially uh surprisingly successful against local Roman garrisons and they massacre a bunch of people and so forth, but then legions and even against the legions based in the east in in Syria.

(1:14:41) But they're fighting against an empire that has unbelievable resources, uh a giant army and is really at its height in terms of its capacities. And so they just bring to bear just an incredible number of legions that come and absolutely, you know, lay siege to Jerusalem. They destroy it. They devastate Judea in general.

(1:15:02) The last rebels are holding out in Msada as we said u and but everybody is eventually all caught and it's all uh put to end. And so the destruction of the temple then ends the second temple period. temple had been at the heart of how um Jews of the second temple period understood their religion even if they were in diaspora.

The Destruction of the Second Temple

(1:15:24) They were still looking to the Jerusalem temple. Um but this now changes the course of history for both Judaism and Christianity which is separated at this point as a um as its own emerging world religion. And so after the final revolt, the third um uh Roman Jewish war under the leadership of Barokba that many people including some of the rabbis had thought was the messiah in this last kind of understanding of a political messiah who's going to overturn Roman rule.

(1:15:58) That revolt was similarly suppressed by the Romans in 136. And that um that defeat slowly led the rabbis to fully take the lead in reassembling the understanding of what Judaism was going to be. So in the post second temple period in the in the following centuries we now have the emergence of rabbitic Judaism which is the kind of Judaism that exists in all of its forms to the present.

(1:16:29) Um and meanwhile um the Romans devastate uh destroy Jerusalem and forbid uh Jews from coming back to it. So um I've just gone through that in more detail, but that was what we talked about in uh this chronological slide, the sweep from the the um building of the second temple to its destruction in 70. So after the emperor Hadrien, another great builder, an even greater builder than Herod, famous for his uh wall in Britain and also for the Pantheon in Rome and plenty of other incredible buildings.

Post-Destruction and the Legacy of the Site

(1:17:09) So after he goes to a tour of all of the east and stops by and sees Judea in the year 129 130 um he decides that he's going to rebuild the city and he's going to you know after some maybe some in ideas that he might have let the Jewish people come back. He does not do that and instead he decides to found a new pagan city on the ruins of Jerusalem as we say that's named Alia Capalina in honor of him and very likely you know one of the main things that has survived uh amidst these ruins is the platform itself uh of the temple mount. And so

(1:17:48) that platform is um a new temple probably to Jupiter is put on there a pagan temple. So Jews are forbidden interest into the city and they continue to be forbidden throughout the entire pagan Roman period and into the Christian Roman period. And it's only when the Muslims conquer the city from Christian Byzantine defenders that Jews are allowed to come back into the city for the first time.

(1:18:17) And so um when we see the outlines here of the rebuilt city, the new city of Alia Capalina, this ends up becoming um the the roads and form of the old city as it exists today. So the previous old city is pretty well other than the Temple Mount pretty well wiped clear. Some of the locations of the pools remain, but a large there's a lot of it is um then fully rebuilt on this.

(1:18:44) And we have very interestingly the first surviving map of this in the Madaba mosaic which is from the 500s. And so if we go back to this, we normally in modern times we orient maps to the north. So when we're looking at this, you're seeing um you know the big temple box there on the right where the where it says the temple of Jupiter will be.

(1:19:05) Um uh there's a half circle where there is the northern gate and out of that there are two main roads that are branching which are the eastern and western cordos that is like to say the Roman cities are founded usually just by one coro and then a cross street of a decummanus and so you can see the decummanus kind of going across those two but anyway there's the two that branch out from that same northern gate making kind of a triangle.

(1:19:31) So if we go to the um Madaba mosaic and if we remember that in ancient and medieval times um maps are normally oriented to the east which is why we even say orient because that means east and so this one has east that way. So if we were thinking north, we have to think of the the north being, you know, that way, right? And so, um, you can see that circular area where that northern gate is, and then you see these two roads that branch out, the eastern and western corridors, and they're each lined with all these colonades. And so that's how

(1:20:04) this uh, Alia Capalina will have been laid out. And still the old city to this day has that follows those lines. Although kind of the vast um ancient colonated roads from the Roman times of these long streets, they've contracted and they're now almost like um arcaded hallways, you know, that you're kind of just walking through like the city, but it's almost like you're inside a building in these in these streets.

(1:20:30) It's really an interesting um um survival through of the ancient city's plan through the um the middle ages and early modern times to uh the present in the old city. Um we've done a whole lecture on the last pagan emperor Julian. So after the family of Constantine, Constantine converts to Christianity and starts to patronize um the Christian church and later successors build up um the prestige of it so that Christian bishops for example become important uh officers of um within the empire.

(1:21:10) Julian uh who has been raised Christian but has thought better of it and wants to um goes back to the worship of Rome's old gods and wants to build up if he can um pagan-like institution that's almost like the church that he can patronize in order to have a competitor to the Christian church. Um he also um flirts with the idea of you know um you know again more tolerance again for Jews but also maybe we could rebuild uh the Jerusalem temple and restore um uh Jewish worship there allow the Jews to return there. Um but once again as we

(1:21:48) saw when we did our lecture on him because his reign is so short you know all of these plans we didn't get to come to fruition. So, we don't know if he would have done that or if he had been able to rule for 20 years and then had another successor that ruled in his um in his model for another 20 years. Anything might have happened, but because he only ruled a couple years u that didn't end up happening.

(1:22:13) And so that meant that um um when seeing one so when the um so what ended up happening is we go back to Alia um when uh uh after Justinian I'm sorry after Julian when the uh when the Roman Empire becomes fully Christian and indeed after Theodosius um outlaws paganism and the pagan temples are all closed um then the city uh starts to take on a fully Christian character.

(1:22:48) But the Christians don't decide to put a um a giant cathedral or church uh where the temple of Jupiter had been rather they let that fall into ruins and leave everything on the temple mount in ruins. And instead, you can kind of see there's a there's a squares over on the left here that says temple that are on the western corridor.

(1:23:12) Um and that is where um there had been like a a temple probably to Venus over there. And that uh basilica and shrine that hadn't been there that is repurposed and rebuilt by Constantine as the church of the original church of the holy supplr and that becomes the um the seat of the bishop for um uh for Jerusalem and the patriarch of Jerusalem in Christianity.

(1:23:37) And of course you can imagine why um since the holy supplr is meant to be it's where you know Constantine's mother St. Helena finds the the true cross, she believes uh and it's where they identify uh the hill on which that had originally been outside the city walls, but obviously it's inside the city of Alia Capalina's walls.

(1:24:00) Um that where Jesus had been executed, crucified. And so those are two amazing holy sites. They also identify their Jesus's tomb. So all of those sites are right there within that complex and therefore that becomes very holy. But you still might wonder why this really important site of this giant platform, you know, where the Jerusalem temple itself had been, why did the Christians just let that um fall into ruins and be vacant? Why would you do that? You can answer in the comments, but but I'll tell you.

(1:24:36) It's because in the gospels Jesus um predicts uh that the that the temple will be destroyed and again those are written after the temple is destroyed. So I'm not saying that it's an actual prediction but in any event there is a prediction in the gospels of Jesus that that the temple will all be destroyed. And so this is a vindication of prophecy for the Christians.

(1:25:02) They like just seeing this space um uh remaining as rubble. But then as a result when the Muslims conquer um uh Jerusalem city they call alkuds the holy the holy precinct that means that this amazing piece of sacrial real estate was completely vacant at the time of the Muslim conquest. and then it becomes uh the space um that that uh the Muslims fill.

(1:25:33) And so in fact the very first building, the oldest surviving religious structure that we have built by a Muslim ruler, the Khalif Abd al- Malik, um beginning in 691, uh is the shrine of the Dome of the Rock, which is thought to be located where the holy place uh the temple proper within the vast temple precinct.

(1:25:59) You can still see the flat platform all around it. um the temple mount as it's understood in Judaism, the um harim sharif in Islam as is holy place that's understood um to Muslims. And so um and so then this becomes one of the holiest sites in Islam and certainly architecturally um you know one of the most important sites in the world as as the old oldest um Muslim religious structure.

(1:26:29) Okay. So, we talked about the history of the second temple, but I want to go back to the first temple. You may have wondered why I started where I did. And in part, it's because the second temple from a historical standpoint is ultimately much more important or was much more important than the first temple ever was.

(1:26:53) Um although theologically they're understood to be the same and biblically uh the first temple which is attributed to Solomon obviously has like a an incredible amount of importance in the in the Bible as we have it. Um but if we were to compare the two of them the first temple is like is here on the left the second temple on the right.

(1:27:14) The first temple would obviously been in the same place as where the second temple is. These are the inner precincts. There's there's still a larger platform around it, but the platform that Herod built is significantly bigger than what the the the precinct that is around um the first temple, which is um which is more more or less just what the original hill was as opposed to a big um platform built.

(1:27:40) So by the time the biblical texts were written, the authors had an association with the first temple with the legendary King Solomon. And I say legendary because the stories we have of Solomon in the Bible um are not going to be carried down. They're too far away from whenever the historical Solomon, if there was a historical Solomon, would have lived.

(1:28:06) And indeed all of the um all of the books that are attributed to King Solomon like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes these are um uh pseudapigrial books where people who are not Solomon are writing a wisdom book in Solomon's name. Um the people though in when there there was a first temple and the people at when it was around at the end of the first temple period um therefore had a sense of it as being something of great antiquity.

(1:28:39) So they don't really it it begins before their actual um written history and so it go it's going back into the time of fables and and uh oral tradition and the name Solomon is associated with it along with um some of the other shrines and sites of in the area and so and and so when people started to um create kind of the mythic stories of where it came from these These are these were incor Solomon was then incorporated into those stories.

(1:29:12) Uh in the same way that the royal house is called the house of David and so there's an assumption that there was an aonomous ancestor named David. It could just be the name of their house but in any event the assumption is made that that aonomous ancestor is an actual person. And so um legends have maybe grown up around that person.

(1:29:34) Um and when there all the myths are written together once again it's too far away from uh when that person if he was a historic person lived for those two have a lot of historicity and none of the um texts attributed to David like the psalms those are written in his name later they're not written by um any historical king like that but um nevertheless it's a name then that uh exists that's associated with an actual historic uh building.

(1:30:06) But nevertheless, like the second temple, the first temple structure was likely reworked multiple times in its history. So in other words, people understood that it went back centuries and centuries past when their when their actual written history says anything about it. It's an ancient shrine and different kings have rebuilt it.

(1:30:24) So maybe um you know a big revision happened under Hezekiah and Manasseh and Josiah and so forth. Different rebuildings will have been taking place. Um, you know, we've talked about before about the legendary uh Davidic and Solomonic Empire, and there's a whole um lecture we did on this on on what's called the myth of David's kingdom. But essentially um when the book of kings describes this territory that goes from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt um and talks about you know Tisha and Dan and Gaza and Beersa that this this doesn't exist or it doesn't correlate

(1:31:02) with any um empire that was had its capital at Jerusalem in the historic period but what it does correspond to is the satri of Ibernari as the um Persians call it the satre of the trans Euphrates uh land and so essentially when these stories are being compiled by the exiles in the Persian period they're essentially envisioning this entire satre in which they are part of as having been part of this u mythic solommonic empire uh as they're looking back to it um and so as we look in general of the context of the first

(1:31:46) temple period. Let's start instead of starting at the left and going to right, let's start in the more recent times. So the um so the the purple there is the Persian period and we can see the second temple being created. So that's what we've already gone through in our previous um uh timeline.

(1:32:06) You go back in time there, you can see the Babylonian captivity which has the Babylonians destroying Jerusalem in 587 and also therefore destroying the first temple. And then before that we have this period of the independent kingdom of Judah that includes important kings at the end of Hezekiah, Manasseh and Josiah. And before that there is an independent kingdom of Israel which is larger and more important than Judah had been in the when the time period that Israel is independent but is destroyed by uh the Assyrians and incorporated into Assyria.

(1:32:43) And then before either of those the biblical narrative gives us this idea of a united monarchy under David and Solomon and Saul. But this is a mythic um lost you know it's a tribal period where there are legends that they have but um those particular um the the idea of that giant kingdom is is a fiction. So we have biblical descriptions for the first temple and all of those descriptions describe it you know as if it was what was happening in Solomon's time.

(1:33:21) But even though um even though they do since they're all written much later, what they're probably describing is what the first temple would have looked like at the time of its destruction and the writers just assume that it was been that way the whole time going all the way back to Solomon. And so like I say, it is um similar in its uh format of being increasingly inclusive or exclusive as you get closer and closer to the Holy of Holies.

(1:33:47) Um but the building itself would have just been smaller and way less grand than what uh Herod is able to create in the end in his very wealthy uh more advanced client kingdom. The main difference is is when you go into the holy place and pass the veil into the holy of holies um the the first temple included um the ark of the covenant.

(1:34:13) uh we more or less assume it says so anyway in the biblical descriptions and that though is not present in the second temple ever. So that has lost at the time of the first temple's destruction andor maybe a little bit before that. We're not entirely sure. And so we also can see there the um uh seraraphim that are guarding it.

(1:34:36) So the ark of the covenant has um on on its top winged ser uh cherabs and so the um cherabs are extending their their wings and that becomes a seat. It's called the mercy seat. And so even though there is not a cult statue of the God since you're not allowed to make an image of the God of Israel, the Lord, it nevertheless allows a place for God's presence to be physically there since God can sit then on the the wings of the angels there and be present in that holiest place uh within the first temple.

(1:35:13) Um we talked about how uh that same idea. So the kingdom of Israel before its destruction also may have been um having a a may have been the origin of a a centralizing Yahweh um manolitus religion. And it may be that the um the northern kings in creating shrines on the both sides of their um kingdom at the very top in Dan and at the very bottom in Bethl, the house of the Lord.

(1:35:49) Um these two shrines that each of which have a a golden calf or a golden bull. Um in the Bible, those are interpreted as being idols. But it also could be that those are um in the same way that um Baal is sometimes said to be riding around on on on bulls uh heavenly bulls, the same way that Yahweh in the uh in the ark of the covenant is resting on the wings of of cherabs.

(1:36:20) So in this same way, Yahweh as the God of Israel is able to rest over the entire kingdom by having um you know the one foot on the on the little golden bowl that's in Bethl and the other one on Dan. So that's certainly an interpretation of what what those might have been. But ultimately um that's not the biblical interpretation.

(1:36:43) And when we get to uh Josiah's reforms, one of the places he is able to destroy when he uh because he's able to reach it is on the border, he goes to Bethl and destroys that uh shrine there. So, um, in terms of what this temple would have been like in contrast to contemporary Canaanite temples, other than the lack of a cult statue, very much resembles contemporary pagan Canaanite temples in surrounding little kingdoms and cities.

(1:37:16) And so, archaeologists have identified a number of these and they have a similar form uh with a sacred space and sometimes an interior sacred space and so forth. Um the biblical the biblical account also tells us that the Jerusalem and temple itself very likely and actually we can say historically his from a historical perspective certainly also began as a pagan temple.

(1:37:44) So there would have been a um a Canaanite shrine here if it dates all the way back to the tribal period when when um Solomon would have been alive. It would have been uh it would have been a pagan temple then because Yahwehism has not uh evolved into a monolitist religion. And indeed at the very end of the first temple period, the biblical accounts talk about King Josiah purging the first temple of all of its cult statues, its asherupoles, all of the different um ways that people are able to worship a much broader um Canaanite pantheon uh at the Jerusalem

(1:38:21) temple. And so for example um having after having claimed to find a forgotten text of the law in the temple's holy of holies which lots of scholars identify as the source text of Deuteronomy. So this thing that is maybe beginning whether you know this is the earliest date for it.

Josiah's Reforms and Monolatry

(1:38:44) There's lots of um scholars who who push this later to the exile period and beyond. But if it's if this text is dating to the first temple period, it's coming in this time period. Uh 2 kings describes King Josiah of Judah and his priests engaging in a very substantial religious reform. So Josiah commanded the high priest Hilkaya and the priests of the second order and the guardians of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all of the vessels made for Baal for Asher and for the hosts of heaven.

(1:39:21) He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidrin and carried their ashes to Bethl. He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem and those who also made offerings to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and all the hosts of heaven.

(1:39:48) So even though they're not named here, these are all gods. And so, you know, in addition to Baal and Asher, there are multiple gods that have been worshiped here and they've been commissioned by the previous kings of Judah to do that. So, on the one hand, what we're doing is centralizing religion. So, all of the other cities of Judah that have temples, those are being closed and also all of the earlier shrines in high places, those are being closed.

(1:40:14) Then he also brought out the image of Asher from the house of the Lord. So it's in the temple and it's being you're worshiping the goddess there. Uh it's brought outside Jerusalem to Wadi Kedron and he burned it at Wadi Kedron. He beat it to dust and he threw the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.

(1:40:34) So he's desecrating all of these uh religious items. He broke down the houses of the illicit priests who were in the house of the Lord. And this is sometimes uh this is sometimes translated as male temple prostitutes. So in other words, these are additional pagan priests who are worshiping other um gods in other ways than what is going to happen after this reform.

(1:41:00) And he also where the women did and also where the women did the weaving for the h for Asher. So all the women are are doing all of their uh rituals and support of the goddess. He brought all of the priests out of the towns of Judah. He defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings. From Geba to Beersa, he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance to the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on the left at the gate of the city.

(1:41:30) The priests of the high places, however, did not come up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but ate unleaven bread among their own kindred. So, in other words, the local priests are not going to be able to be in the sacrifice business, but they um they have uh they're given a different religious job under the new centralized centralizing here, including eating unleavened bread among their kindred.

(1:41:54) Josiah defiled Toph, which is in the valley of Benhinam in which is next to Jerusalem, so that no one would make a son or daughter pass through the fire as an offering to Molech. So this is a reference to um child sacrifice that had been happening now will no longer be allowed. He removed uh the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the son another god at the entrance to the house of the lord by the chamber of the unic Nathan Melik which was in the precincts and then he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. So the sun is no longer going

(1:42:31) to be worshiped uh and its different idols are no longer going to be worshiped in the Jerusalem temple. The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz that kings of Judah had made and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord he pulled uh down and there broke into pieces and he threw the rubble into the Wadi Kiddran.

(1:42:55) The king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem to the south of the mount of destruction which King Solomon of Israel had built for Estarte the abomination of the Sidonians for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And so here are additional shrines to three other gods that are also identified at the end of the second temple period with King Solomon.

(1:43:22) Uh and so and so they have to later come up with a story about why um Solomon if he had worshiped just the one God as they retroject the idea of monolatry all the way back into his time why was he also um associated with making these um these altars to other gods than the God of Israel.

(1:43:44) And so they that later create a story of therefore of Solomon uh in his old age succumbing to u multiple wives and clearly not being wise and breaking with the God of Israel and so forth. So Josiah broke the pillars into pieces. He cut down the sacred poles the way you worship the goddess Asher. He covered the sights with human bones. Moreover, at the author of at the altar of Bethl, that um shrine of the northern kingdom that has fallen, the high place erected by Jeroboam, the northern king, who caused the northern kingdom, Israel, to sin. He pulled down that altar along

(1:44:19) with the high place. Josiah burned the high place, crushing it to dust. And he also burned the sacred pole, the Asher pole that you use for the worship of the goddess. So in other words, at the very near the very end of the first temple's existence during the reign of Josiah, just at the at the moment when um when this part of the Bible is becoming historical, the Bible itself describes a reform of the temple.

(1:44:46) Um taking it from a a pagan temple with includes all kinds of altars and cult objects from an entire pantheon, some of which um again by tradition go all the way back to Solomon, just like the temple itself. and instead begins this institution of monolitrous worship of Yahweh. We worship only the one God. And then later, you know, in the um uh in the exilic period and especially in the Persian period, this becomes um a a true worship of monotheism and uh in the future.

(1:45:19) So, we've looked at this a bunch of times. This is not how it's told in the Bible because the way the Bible is written. it's written from that later monotheist perspective or editors um that later perspective are changing, deleting and and adding things to make it seem like this. But in other words, um the Bible presents a monotheist foundation at the beginning of time.

(1:45:45) And what happens is according to the biblical narrative, as people turn away from God, there is increasing polytheism until we get to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586. Um so so at this idea at the core prophets good kings they all attempt to hold monotheism in this constructed uh biblical narrative and in the constructed biblical narrative polytheist rebellions just increase over time and that leads to the destruction of Jerusalem.

(1:46:15) But if we look at what the actual history is, is that throughout the entire period prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, nearly all of the Israelites were always polytheists. And hentheism then ultimately monolatry is is introduced as a centralizing reform. Um and then because the kings and their allies, the high priests um are centralizing uh religion to their e in the case of the northern kingdom their their core shrines or later in the kingdom of Judah to the Jerusalem temple alone.

(1:46:52) Um that is why the Bible then is written and presented in this way and that is why then the first temple at the very end of its period in of its existence suddenly becomes theologically very very important and that's why I say it's for most of its existence it's way less important because there's all these other temples that will have been um part of the religion until they're all finally destroyed.

Conclusion: The Transition to Diaspora Religion

(1:47:18) Uh and so then the second temple um comes into existence with all of that pentup theological uh importance. And so um and I've just kind of explained that already. So that's therefore kind of my uh take and my history of the first and second temples. And we see them compared here in terms of size and scale. Uh ultimately the second temple um becomes incredibly important and also a really amazing glorious building.

(1:47:52) Um but both are ultimately destroyed and for almost all of um the history of Judaism um uh it has been lived as a diaspora religion and indeed the bulk of the identity is kind of formed as a diaspora religion and then especially rabbitic Judaism is reformed uh from uh the aftermath of the destruction of the second temple all the way up till the present and uh It is only now uh with the creation of um the modern state of Israel in the 20th century that a significant or you know about half of uh Jewish people have moved back to the

(1:48:34) land and are experiencing um what it means to have a um you know a Jewish state for the very first time again since uh those brief periods of rebellion and then all the way back to really to the to the Makipe kingdom which was really only independent for a very short period of time. And so that is my uh look at the history of the first and second temples.

Table 1: Previous Lectures or Episodes

Table 2: Religious Studies Terms

Table 3: Individuals Named

Table 4: Bible Passages

Table 5: Non-English Words

Table 6: Books Mentioned

Table 7: Linguistics Terms

Table 8: Scientific Terms

Table 9: Graphics Referenced

Table 10: Biblical Cities

Table 11: Archaeological Sites

Table 12: Chronology